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A MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK GENEALOGICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY. 




I. New Y'ori^^Sqciety in Olden Time 



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II. Traces of American Lineage in England 




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G. P. PUTNAM & SONS, 

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TO 

EDWARD FLOYD DE LANCEY, Esq., 

OF NEW YORK. 

Nearly thirty years ago the author dedicated to your venerated fatlier the 
first book he published. There is a propriety, therefore, in inscribing to lire son 
the last he may ever wTite. 

It harmonizes, too, with tlie spirit of this worii to place on this page the name 
of one who now represents in tliis comitry the loyal and chivalrous De Lancey of 
"the olden time." 



NEW YORK SOCIETY 



OLDEN TIME. 



PREFACE. 



Probably no article has appeared for years in a New York 
literary journal which excited the attention of the community 
to the extent of the first of those reprinted in this volume — 
" New York Society in the Olden Time." It was published in 
Put nam's Magazine for September, 1870. While tlie papers 
generally criticised it, and contended that the present times 
were best, those, on the contrary, whose associations stretched 
back into the past, hailed it as a faithful portraiture of life as 
it was in the Colony and in the generation which succeeded 
our separation from the Mother Country. A member of one 
of our oldest Colonial families writes to the author : " I did 
not know there existed in this modern time any one having 
the knowledge as well as courage to write so clear and un- 
biassed a review of the past." 

The author has yielded, therefore, to the request of friends 
to enlarge the article and give it a more permanent form. It 
is a picture of a state of things gone never to return, and per- 
haps for that reason is worthy of preservation. A few years 
longer and no one will be left who could give these reminis- 
cences. 

The second article in this volume is different in its style and 
object, being published in a journal of a widely different char- 
acter. It appeared in the July, 1871, number of the " New 
York Genealogical and Biographical Record." This also has 
been considerably enlarged by notices of other families. 

Perhaps, together, these two articles may save from perish- 
ing, some recollections of the Old Regime. 

While for the young, who are looking only to the shadowy 
future, these pages may possess but little interest, perhaps 



° PREFACE. 



there are those with whom the Hght is fading, who will find 
here famihar scenes and names which will call up again " the 
bur.ed past," until the tones sound to them (as one writes 
the author) "like the voice of their own dear kindred." 



New York, Jan., 1872. 



New York Society 



OLDEN TIME 



To lament the days that are gone, and beHeve the 
past better than the present, is a tendency which has 
been remarked as far back as the days of Solomon. 
"Say not thou," says the wise king, "What is the 
cause that the former days were better than these? for 
thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." However 
this may be, it is a propensity which has always exist- 
ed, to compare unfavorably the present with the distant 
past. The Golden Age of which poets sang was in 
" our fathers' day, and in the old time before them." 

From this feeling the writer realizes that he is not 
free, and, in many respects, might be inclined to impute 
his estimate of the present to the waning light in which 
he sees it. When dealing, however, with facts with 
which he is well acquainted, he feels that he cannot be 
prejudiced ; and in this way it is that he contrasts the 
society of the present with that which once existed in 
New York. From his distant home he looks back on 
the rush and hurry of life as it now exists in his native 
city; and, while he realizes its increased glitter and 

2 



lO NEW YORK SOCIETY 

splendor, he feels that it has depreciated from the 
dignity and high tone which once characterized it. 

Of the society of the olden time he can, of course, 
know but little b)- actual experience. His knowledge 
of it began when the old r'egiiiic was just passing away. 
In the days of his childhood, the men of the Revolution 
were fast going down to the grave. Of these he knew 
some in their old age. His father's contemporaries, 
however, were somewhat j-ounger, though brought up 
under the same influences. But when that generation 
departed, the spirit which had aided in forming their 
characters had gone also, never again to be felt. To 
many of these men he looked up as if they were superior 
beings ; and, indeed, he has felt, in all his passage 
through life, that he has never seen the equals of those 
who then stood forward prominently in public affairs. 

The earliest notice we have of colonial society is in 
Mrs. Grant's delightful " American Lady." She was 
the daughter of a British officer who came over with 
troops during the old French war, and her reminis- 
cences begin about 1 760. Her residence was princi- 
pally in Albany, with the Schuyler family. Still, she 
was brought in contact with the leading families of the 
colony, and as she was in the habit of often visiting 
New York, she learned much of the state of things in 
that city. She writes thus of the old Dutch and colo- 
nial families of that day: "They bore about them the 
tokens of former affluence and respectability, such as 
family plate, portraits of their ancestors executed in a 
superior style, and great numbers of original paintings, 
some of which were much admired by acknowledged 
judges." In New York, of course, the highest degree 
of refinement was to be seen, and she says: "An ex- 
pensive and elegant style of living began already to 
take place in New York, which was, from the resi- 







IN THE OLDEN TIME. I I 

dence of the Governor and Commander-in-Chief, be- 
come the seat of a little court." 

Society, in that day, was very stationary. About 
1635 the first Dutch settlers came out, and the country 
was much of it occupied by their large grants, many of 
which had attached to them manorial rights. They 
brought with them some of the social distinctions ot the 
old country. In the cities of Holland, for a long time, 
there had been "great" and "small" burgher rights. 
In Amsterdam the "great burghers" monopolized all 
the offices, and were also exempt from attainder and 
confiscation of goods. The "small burghers" had the 
freedom of trade only. In 1657 this "great burgher" ^^ 
right was introduced into New Amsterdam by Gover- 
nor Stuyvesant. ^ I ""(^ 

In Paulding's "Affairs and Men of New Amsterdam 
in the Time of Governor Peter Stuyvesant," we find a 
list of the recorded Great Citizenship, in the year 
1657. As a matter of the olden time, it is here given 
entire : 

Joh. La Montagnie Jun. Hendrick Kip Jun. 

Jan Gillesen Van Burggh. Capt. Martin Crigier. 

Hendrick Kip. Carel Van Burggh. 

"De Heer General Stuyvesant. Jacob Van Couwenhoven. 

Domanie Megapolensis. Laurisen Cornelisea Van Wei. 

Jacob Garritsen Strycker. Johannes Pietersen Van Burggh. 

Van Virge. Cornelis Steenwyck. 

Wife of Cornelis Van Teinhoven. Will. Bogardus. 

Hendrick Van Dyck. Daniel Litschoe. 

Isaac Kip. Pieter Van Couwenhoven. 

" These twenty names," says William L. Stone, 
writing in 1866, "composed the aristocracy of New 
York two hundred and nine years ago. . . . We 
have also before us the names of the ' Small Citizen- 
ship,' which numbered two hundred and si.xteen. In 
a few short years it was found that the division of the 



12 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

citizens into two classes produced great inconvenience, 
in consequence of the very small number of great 
burghers who were eligible to office. It now became 
necessary for the Government to change this unpopu- 
lar order. In the year 1668 the difference between 
'great' and 'small' burghers was abolished, when 
every burgher became legally entitled to all burgher 
privileges." * 

About fifty years after the arrival of the early Dutch 
settlers, they were followed by the Huguenots, driven 
abroad principally by the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, and including, in their number, members of 
some of the best families in France. Thus came the 
Jays, De Lanceys, Rapaljes, De Peysters, Pintards, 
&c. In 1664 the English took possession of the col- 
ony, and, from that time, English settlers increased. 
The colony became (as Paulding says) "a place in 
which to provide for younger sons." Still, this often 
brought out scions of distinguished families and the 
best blood in England. 

Thus matters stood until the Revolution. The 
country was parcelled out among great proprietors. 
We can trace them from the city of " New Amster- 
dam" to the northern part of the State. In what is 
now the thickly-populated city were the lands of the 
Stuyvesants, originally the Boiuerie of the old Gover- 
nor. Next above was the grant to the Kip family, 
called "Kip's Bay," made in 1638. In the centre of 
the island were the possessions of the De Lanceys. 
Opposite, on Long Island, was the grant to the Law- 
rence family. We cross over Harlaem River and reach 
" Morrissanea," given to the Morris family. Beyond 
this, on the East River, was " De Lancey's Farm," 
another grant to that powerful family ; while on the 

• Stone's " Histon- of New York City," p. 33. 



IN THE OI.PF.N TIME. 13 

Hudson, to the west, was the lower Van Courtlandt 
manor, and the PhilHpse manor. Above, at Peekskill, 
was the upper manor of the Van Courdandts. Then 
came the manor of Livingston, then the Beekmans, 
then the manor of Kipsburgh, purchased by the Kip 
family from the Indians, in 1686, and made a royal 
grant by Governor Dongan, two years afterwards. 
Still higher up was the Van Rensselaer manor, twenty- 
four miles by forty-eight; and, above that, the pos- 
sessions of the Schuylers. Further west, on the Mo- 
hawk, were the broad lands of Sir William Johnson, 
created a baronet for his services in the old French 
and Indian wars, who lived in a rude magnificence at 
Johnson Hall. All this was sacrificed by his son, Sir 
John, for the sake of loyalty, when he took up arms 
for the king and was driven into Canada. The title, 
however, is still held by his grandson, and stands re- 
corded in the baronetage of England. 

The very names of places, in some cases, show their 
history. Such, for instance, is that of Yonkers. The 
word Junker (pronounced Younkcr'), in the languages 
of Northern Europe, means the nobly-born — the gen- 
tleman. In West Chester, on the Hudson River, still 
stands the old manor-house of the Phillipse family. 
The writer remembers, in his early day, when visiting 
there, the large rooms and richly-ornamented ceilings, 
with quaint old formal gardens about the house. 
When, before the Revolution, Mr. Phillipse lived 
there, " lord of all he surveyed," he was always spoken 
of by his tenantry as "the Yonker" — the gentleman 
— par excellence. In fact, he was the only person of 
that social rank in that part of the country. In this 
way the town, which subsequently grew up about the 
old manor-house, took the name of Yonkers. 

This was a state of things which existed in no other 



14 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

part of the continent. In New England there were 
scarcely any large landed proprietors. The country 
was divided up among small farmers, and, when the 
Revolution commenced, the people almost unanimously 
espoused its cause. The aristocratic element, which 
in New York rallied around the Crown, was here en- 
tirely wanting. The only exception to this, which w^e 
can remember, was the case of the Gardiners, of 
Maine. Their wide lands were confiscated for their 
loyalty ; but, on account of sorhe informality, after the 
Revolution they managed to recover their property, 
and are still seated at Gardiner. 

At the South, where so much was said about their 
beine "the descendants of the Cavaliers," there were 
no such feudal relations. The planters had no ten- 
antry ; they had slaves. Their system, therefore, was 
similar to that of the serfdom of Russia. With the 
colonial families of New York it was the English' feu- 
dal system. 

Hereditary landed property was, in that day, invest- 
ed with the same dignity in New York which it has 
now in Europe ; and, for more than a century, these 
families retained their possessions, and directed the 
infant colony. They formed a coterie of their own, 
and, generation after o-eneration, married among them- 
selves. Turn to the early records of New York, and 
you find all places of official dignity filled by a certain 
set of familiar names, many of which, since the Revo- 
lution, have entirely disappeared. As we have re- 
marked, they occupied a position similar to that of the 
English country gentleman, with his many tenants, and 
were everywhere looked up to with the same kind of 
respect which is now accorded to them. Their position 
was an acknowledged one, for social distinctions then 
were marked and undisputed. They were the persons 



IN THE OI.DEX TIME. 15 

who were placed in office in the Provincial Council 
and Legislature, and no one pretended to think it 
strange. " They," says a writer on that day, "were 
the gentry of the country, to whom the country, with- 
out a rebellious thought, took off its hat." 

Holmes, in his poem of " Agnes," thus describes the 
effect produced upon country people by the sight of a 
gentleman's equipage : — 

" And all the midland counties through, 

The ploughman stopped to gaze, 
Where'er his chariot swept in view 

Behind the shining bays, 
With mute obeisance, grave and slow, 

Repaid by bow polite — 
For such the way with high and hnu 

Till after Concord's fight y 

In that age the very dress plainly marked the dis- 
tinctions in society. No one who saw a gentleman 
could mistake his social position. Those people of a 
century ago now look down upon us from their por- 
traits, in costumes which, in our day, we see nowhere 
but on the stage. Velvet coats with gold lace, large 
sleeves and ruffles at the hands, wigs and embroidered 
vests, with the accompanying rapier, are significant of 
a class removed from the rush and busde of life — the 
" nati consumere fruges " — whose occupation was not 
— to toil. No one, in that day, below their degree, 
assumed their dress ; nor was the lady surpassed in 
costliness of attire by her servant. In fact, at that 
time, there were gentlemen and ladies, and there were 
servants. 

The manner in which these great landed estates 
were arranged fostered a feudal feeling. They were 
granted by Government to the proprietors, on condi- 
tion that, in a certain number of years, they settled so 



l6 NEW YORK snriETV 

many tenants upon them. These settlers were gener- 
ally Germans of the lower class, who had been brought 
over free. Not being able to pay their passage-money, 
the captain took them without charge, and then they 
were sold by him to the landed proprietors for a cer- 
tain number of years, in accordance with the size of the 
family. The sum received remunerated him for the 
passage-money. They were called, in that day, Re- 
dcmptioners ; and, by the time their term of service- 
sometimes extending to seven years — had expired, 
they were acquainted with the ways of the country and 
its manner of farming, had acquired some knowledge 
of the language, and were prepared to set up for them- 
selves. Thus both parties were benefited. The landed 
proprietor fulfilled his contract with the Government, 
and the Redemptioners were trained for becoming in- 
dependent settlers. 

From these Redemptioners many of the wealthy 
farming families, now living in the Hudson River coun- 
ties, are descended. In an early day they purchased 
lands which enriched their children. The writer's fa- 
ther once told him of an incident which occurred in his 
grandfather's family. One of his German tenants, 
having served out his time of several years' duration, 
brought to his late owner a bag of gold which had come 
with him from the old country, and was sufficient to 
purchase a farm. " But," said his master, in surprise, 
" how comes it, Hans, with all this money, that you did 
not pay your passage, instead of serving as a Redemp- 
tioner so long?" — "Oh," said the cautious emigrant 
from the Rhine, " I did not know English, and I should 
have been cheated. Now I know all about the coun- 
try, and I can set up for myself" 

These tenants, however, looked up with unbounded 
reverence to the landed proprietor who owned them, 



TX 'rnK OI.DKX TIMK. 1/ 

and it took much more; than one generation to enable 
them to shake off this feehng, or begin to think of a 
social equality. 

There was, in succeeding times, one curious result 
of this system in the confusion of family names. These 
German Redemptioners often had but one name. For 
ins^tance, a man named Paulus was settled as a tenant 
on an estate. As his children grew up, they needed 
something to distinguish them. They were Paulus' 
Jan and Paulus' Hendrick. This naturally changed to 
Jan Paulus and Hendrick Paulus, and thus Paulus be- 
came the family name. 

This was well enough. But they frequently took 
the name of their proprietor. He was known as Mor- 
ris' Paulus, and this, in the next generation, naturally 
changed to Paulus Morris, and his children assumed 
that as their family name. In this way there are many 
families in the State of New York bearing the names 
of the old landed proprietors, which have been thus 
derived. 

Some years ago, a literary gentleman, who was com- 
piling facts with regard to the early history of the State, 
came to the writer, very much puzzled. " Who," said 
he, " are these people ? I find their names in Dutchess 
County, and yet, looking at Holgate's pedigree of that 
family, I see they cannot belong to it. Where did they 
come from, and where do they belong?" The above 
account was a satisfactory solution of the mystery. 

But to return to this system. It was carried out to 
an extent of which, in this day, most persons are igno- 
rant. On the V^an Rensselaer manor there were, at 
one time, several thousand tenants, and their gathering 
was like that of the Scottish clans. When a member 
of the family died, they came down to Albany to do 
honor at the funeral, and many were the hogsheads of 
3 



lO NEW YORK SOCIETY 

good ale which were broached for them. They looked 
up to the " Patroon " with a reverence which was still 
lingering in the writer's early day, notwithstanding the 
inroads of democracy. And, before the Revolution, 
this feeling was shared by the whole country. When 
it was announced in New York, a century ago, that the 
Patroon was coming down from Albany by land, the 
day he was expected to reach the city crowds turned 
out to see him enter in his coach-and-four. 

The reference to the funerals at the Rensselaer 
manor-house reminds us of a description of the burial 
of Philip Livingston, one of the proprietors of Livings- 
ton manor, in February, 1 749, taken from a paper of 
that day. It will show something of the customs of 
the times. The services were performed both at his 
town-house in New York, and at the manor. " In the 
city, the lower rooms of most of the houses in Broad- 
street, where he resided, were thrown open to receive 
visitors. A pipe of wine was spiced for the occasion, 
and to each of the eight bearers, with a pair of gloves, 
mourning ring, scarf and handkerchief a ino)ikcy-spoon 
was given." (This was so called from the figure of an 
ape or monkey, which was carved in solido at the ex- 
tremity of the handle. It differed from a common 
spoon in having a circular and very shallow bowl.) 
"At the manor these ceremonies were all repeated, 
another pipe of wine was spiced, and, besides the same 
presents to the bearers, a pair of black gloves and a 
handkerchief were given to each of the tenants. The 
whole expense was said to amount to ^500." 

These manors were not mere names, but substantial 
evidences of an authority which, in the present day, 
exists only in a few of the most despotic monarchial 
governments of Europe. We will give Holgate's ac- 
count of these manorial rights, as he was very much 



IX THE OI.nEN TIME. 1 9 

disgusted with the whole system, and sums up his ob- 
jections with the declaration—" The patroonship of New 
Netherlands may jusdy be regarded as nothing less 
than an odious form of feudal aristocracy transferred to 
another soil." He says : " The territory was made a 
manor with feudal appendages. The individual thus 
undertaking colonization was designated, in the charter, 
as a Patroon, and endowed with baronial honors. He 
had, for e.xample, the prerogatives of sovereignty over 
the dominion which he thus acquired ; administered the 
laws personally or by functionaries of his own appoint- 
ment ; appointed his own civil and military, as well as 
judicial officers ; and had magazines, fortifications, and 
all the equipments of a feudal chieftain. His tenants 
owed him fealty and military service, as vassals. All 
adjudications in his court were final, with the exception 
of civil suits amounting to fifty guilders and upwards, 
when an appeal la)- from the judgment of the Patroon 
to the Director-General and Council. And it is pro- 
bable, that a similar remedy was also afforded in all 
criminal offences affecting ' life and limb,' this being one 
of the modifications already engrafted upon the feudal 
sovereignties of Europe. 

"The privileges of the Patroon in his manor were 
similar to those of a Baron of England. Game and 
fish within his own territorial limits were under his own 
supervision. Milling privileges, minerals, and pearl 
fisheries, if discovered, were his personal emoluments ; 
which last provision was one of those numerous extrav- 
agancies that for a long period allured the mercantile 
adventurers of Europe, particularly exemplified in the 
El Dorado of Spanish adventurers." * 

Now, all this was a state of things and a manner of 
social life totally unknown in New England. We have 

* " Holgate's Genealogies," p. 28. 



20 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

already mentioned that most of its inhabitants were 
small farmers, wrinofing- their subsistence irom the earth 
by hard labor. Here were literally no servants, but a 
perfect social equality existed in the rural districts. 
Their " helps " were the sons and daughters of neigh- 
boring farmers, poorer than themselves, who for a time 
took these situations, but considered themselves as 
good as their employers. The comparatively wealthy 
men were in their cities. 

No two races of men could be more different than 
the New Yorkers of that day and the people of New 
England. There was a perfect contrast in all their 
habits of social life and ways of thinking. The Dutch 
disliked the Yankees, as they called them, most thor- 
oughly. This feeling is shown, in a ludicrous way, 
throug-h the whole of Irving's " Knickerbocker." " The 
Dutch and the Yankees," he says, " never got together 
without fighting." 

There is a curious development of this prejudice in 
the following clause, which was inserted in the will of 
a member of a distinguished colonial family of New 

York, dated 1760. " It is my desire that my son, 

may have the best education that is to be had 



in England or America ; but my express will and di- 
rections are, that he never be sent, for that purpose, 
to the Connecticut colonies, lest he should imbibe, in 
his youth, that low craft and cunning so incidental to 
the people of that country, which is so interwoven in 
their constitutions that all their acts cannot disguise it 
from the world, though many of them, under the sanc- 
tified garb of religion, have endeavored to impose 
themselves on the world as honest men." 

Once in a year, generally, the gentry of New York 
went to the city to transact their business and make 
their purchases. There they mingled, for a time, in its 



IX THK OLDKX TIME. 21 

gayeties, and were entertained at the court of the Go- 
vernor. These dignitaries were generally men of high 
families in England. One of them, for instance — Lord 
Cornbury — was a blood relative of the royal family. 
They copied the customs and imitated the etiquette 
enforced " at home," and the rejoicings and sorrow'ings, 
the thanksgivings and fasts, which were ordered at 
Whitehall, were repeated again on the banks of the 
Hudson. Some years ago the writer was looking over 
the records of the old Dutch Church in New York, 
when he found, carefully filed away, some of the proc- 
lamations for these services. One of them, giving no- 
tice of a thanksgiving-day, in the reign of William and 
Mary, for some victory in the Low Countries, puts the 
celebration off a fortnight, to give time for the news to 
reach Albany. 

During the rest of the year these landlords resided 
among their tenantry, on their estates ; and about many 
of their old country-houses were associations gathered, 
often coming down from the first settlement of the 
country, giving them an interest which can never invest 
the new' residences of those whom later times elevated 
through wealth. Such was the Van Courtlandt manor- 
house, with its wainscoted rooms and its ghost-cham- 
ber ; the Rensselaer manor-house, where of old had 
been entertained Talleyrand and the exiled princes 
from Europe ; the Schuyler house, so near the Sara- 
toga battle-field, and marked by memories of that glo- 
rious event in the life of its owner — (alas, that it should 
have passed away from its founder's family !), and the 
residence of the Living^stons, on the banks of the Hud- 
son, of which Louis Philippe expressed such grateful 
recollection when, after his elevation to the throne, he 
met, in Paris, the son of his former host. 

Probably the extent to which hospitality was carried 



22 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

out at the Livingston manor-house had no equal in this 
country. At the beginning of this century, no distin- 
guished foreigner who visited this country but could 
look back, like Louis Philippe, to a visit to that house. 
Thither came Lafayette and his son. Thither came 
the last of the Penns, whose family had intermarried 
with the Livingstons. Thither came Joseph Buona- 
parte, the ex-king of Spain, who remained several days 
with a suite of forty persons. At the moment of his 
departure, when all the equipages were drawn up at 
the grand entrance, and Mrs. Livingston was making 
her adieux on the marble piazza, the princess, his daugh- 
ter, called for her drawing materials. It was supposed 
that she wished to sketch the view, which extends for 
sixty miles around. But those who looked over her 
page discovered that it was the chatelaine she was 
sketchinsf. 

How vivid was Joseph Buonaparte's recollection of 
this visit may be drawn from the fact that when, years 
afterwards, he was dying in Florence, hearing that a 
lady of this family was in the cit)-, he sent for her to 
his bedside. He talked to her about her mother, and 
ended with the remark: "Your mother should have 
been a queen ! " 

There was one more of these old places of which we 
would wri^e, to preserve some memories which are now 
fast fading away, because it was within the bounds of 
our city, and Avas invested with so many historical asso- 
ciations connected with the Revolution. It is the house 
at Kip's Bay. Though many years have passed since 
it was swept away by the encroachments of the city, 
yet it exists among the recollections of the writer's 
earliest days, when it was still occupied by the family 
of its founder, and regarded as their first home on this 
continent. It was erected in 1655, by Jacobus Kip, 



IN TIIK OLDKN TIMF. 



Secretary of the Council, who received a grant of that 
part of the island. There is, in the possession of the 
family, a picture of it as it appeared in the time of the 
Revolution, when still surroimded by venerable oaks. 
It was a laree double house, with three windows on 
one side of the door, and two on the other, with one 
laroe wing. On the right hand of the hall was the 
dimng-room, running from front to rear, with two win- 
dows looking out over the bay, and two over the 
country on the other side. This was the room which 
was afterwards invested with interest from its connec- 
tion with Major Andre. In the rear of the house was 
a pear tree, planted by the ladies of the family in 1 700, 
which bore fruit until its destruction in 185 1. In this 
house five generations of the family were born. 

Then came the Revolution, and Sargent, in his 
" Life of Andre," thus gives its history in those stirring 
times: "Where now, in Ne\v York, is the unalluring 
and crowded neighborhood of the Second avenue and 
Thirty-fifth street, stood, in 1780, the ancient Bozvcrie 
or country-seat of Jacobus Kip. Built in 1655, of 
bricks brought from Holland, encompassed by pleas- 
ant trees, and in easy view of the sparkling waters of 
Kip's Bay, on the East River, the mansion remained, 
even to our own times, in possession of one of its 
founder's line. Here " (continues Sargent, incorporat- 
ing the humorous recollections of Irving's " Knicker- 
bocker ") "spread the same smiling meadows, whose 
appearance had so expanded the heart of Oloffe the 
Dreamer, in the fabulous ages of the colony ; here still 
nodded the groves that had echoed back the thunder 
of Henry Kip's musketoon, when that mighty warrior 
left his name to the surrounding waves. When Wash- 
ington was in the neighborhood. Kip's house had been 
his quarters ; when Howe crossed from Long Island 



24 XEW YORK SOCIETV 

on Sunday, September 15, 1776, he debarked at the 
rocky point hard by, and his skirmishers drove our 
people from their position behind the dwelling. Since 
then it had known many guests. Howe, Clinton, 
Kniphausen, Percy, were sheltered by its roof. The 
aged owner, with his wife and daughter, remained ; 
but they had always an officer of distinction quartered 
with them ; and, if a part of the family were in arms for 
Congress, as is alleged, it is certain that others were 
active for the Crown. Samuel Kip, of Kipsburgh, led 
a cavalry troop of his own tenantry with great gallantry 
in De Lance)''s regiment ; and, despite severe wounds, 
survived long after the war, a heavy pecuniary sufferer 
by the cause which, with most of the landed gentry of 
New York, he had espoused." * 

In i78o-it was held by Colonel Williams, of the 80th 
Royal Regiment; and here, on the evening of the 19th of 
September, he gave a dinner to Sir Henry Clinton and 
his staff, as a parting compliment to Andre. The aged 
owner of the house was present ; and, when the Revo- 
lution was over, he described the scene and the inci- 
dents of that dinner. At the table Sir Henry Clinton 
announced the departure of Andre, next morning, on a 
secret and most important expedition, and added (what 
we have never seen mentioned in any other account, 
and showing what was to have been Andre's re- 
ward), "Plain John Andre will come back Sir John 
Andre." 

Andre — it was said by Mr. Kip — was evidendy de- 
pressed, and took but little part in the merriment about 
him ; and when, in his turn, it became necessary for him 
to sing, he gave the favorite military chanson attributed 
to Wolfe, who sang it on the eve of the battle of Que- 
bec, in which he died : — 

* " Life of Andr6," p. 267. 



IN THK ni.OKN TIME. 25 

\Vhy, soldiers, why 

Should we be melancholy, boys ? 

Why, soldiers, why, 

Whose business 'tis to die ! 

For should next campaign 

Send us to Him who made us, boys, 

We're free from pain ; 

But should we remain, 

A bottle and kind landlady 

Makes all well again. 

His biographer, after copying this account, adds : 
" How brilHant soever the company, how cheerful the 
repast, its memory must e\er have been fraught with 
sadness to both host and guests. It was the last occa- 
sion of Andre's meeting his comrades in life. Four 
short days gone, the hands then clasped by friendship 
were fettered by hostile bonds ; yet nine days more, 
and the darling of the army, the youthful hero of the 
hour, had dangled from a gibbet." * 

After the Revolution the place remained in its own- 
er's possession, for his age had fortunately prevented 
him from taking any active part in the contest. And 
when Washington, in the hour of his triumph, returned 
to New York, he went out to visit again those who, in 
1776, had been his involuntary hosts. Dr. Francis 
relates an interesting little incident which occurred at 
the visit : "On the old road towards Kingsbridge, on 
the eastern side of the island, was the well-known 
Kip's Farm, pre-eminendy distinguished for its grateful 
fruits —the plum, the peach, the pear, and the apple — 
and for its choice culture of the rosacea;. Here the elite 
often repaired, and here our Washington, now invested 
with Presidential honors, made an excursion, and was 
presented with the rosa gallica, an exotic first intro- 
duced into this country in this garden — fit emblem 

* " Life of Andre," p. 26S. 

4 



26 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

of that memorable union of France and the American 
colonies in the cause of republican freedom." * 

In 1 85 1 this old place was demolished. It had then 
stood two hundred and twelve years, and was the 
oldest house on the island. It was swallowed up by 
the growth of the mighty metropolis, and Thirty-fifth 
street runs over the spot where once stood the old 
mansion. A short time after it was deserted, the writer 
made his last visit to it, while most of it was still stand- 
ing, and the stone coat-of-arms over the hall-door was 
projecting from the half-demolished wall. As he stood 
in the old dining-room, there came back to him visions 
of the many noble and chivalrous men who, in the last 
two centuries, had feasted within its walls. But all 
these, like the place itself, now live only in the records 
of the past. 

Such was life in those early days among the colonial 
families in the country and the city. It was simple and 
unostentatious, yet marked by an affluence of every- 
thing which could minister to comfort, and also a de- 
gree of elecfance in the surroundings which created a 
feeling of true refinement. Society was easy and 
natural, without the struggle for precedence which 
now is so universal ; for then every one's antecedents 
were known, and their positions were fixed. The in- 
termarriages, which for more than a century were tak- 
ing place between the landed families, bound them 
together and promoted a harmony of feeling now not 
often seen. There were, in that day, such things as 
old associations, and men lived in the past, instead of, 
as in these times, looking only to the future. 

The system of slavery, too, which prevailed, added 
to the ease of domestic life. Negro slaves, at an early 

* "Old New York " — Anniversary Oiscourse before the New York Historical 
Society, Nov. 17, 1857, by Jolni W. Francis, .M.D., LL.D. 



IN THE OI.OEX TIME. 27 

day, had been introduced into tlie colony, and every 
family of standing possessed some. They were em- 
ployed but little as field-laborers, but every household 
had a few who were domestic servants. Like Abra- 
ham's servants, they were all " born in the house." 
"They shared the same religious instruction with the 
children of the family, and felt, in every respect, as if 
they were members of it. This mild form ot slavery 
was like the system which existed under the tents of 
the patriarchs on the plains of Mamre, and there cer- 
tainly never were happier people than those " men- 
servants and maid -servants." They were seldom 
separated from their families, or sold. The latter was re- 
served as an extreme case for the incorrigible, and a pun- 
ishment to which it was hardly ever necessary to resort. 
The clansmen of Scodand could not take more pride 
in the prosperity of their chief's family than did these 
sable retainers in New Amsterdam. In domestic af- 
fairs they assumed a great freedom of speech, and, in 
fact, family affairs were discussed and setded as fully 
in the kitchen as in the parlor. The older servants, 
indeed, exercised as full control over the children of 
the family as did their parents. As each black child 
attained the age of six or seven years, it was formally 
presented to a son or daughter of the family, and was 
his or her particular attendant. This union continued 
often through life, and of stronger instances of fidelity 
we have never heard than were exhibited in some of 
these cases. Fidelity and affection, indeed, formed the 
bond between master and slave, to a degree which can 
never exist in this day with hired servants.* 

* "Almost every family in the colony owned one or more negro servants; and, 
among the richer classes, their number was considered a certain evidence of their 
master's easy circumstances. About the year 1703 — a period of prosperity in wealth 
and social refinement with the Dutch of New Amsterdam— the Widow Van Courl- 
landt held five male slaves, two female, and two children ; Colonel De Peyster had 



28 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

This state of things continued far down into the 
present century. In the writer's early day his fatiier 
owned slaves for domestic servants, and he well re- 
members, when visiting the place of a relative on the 
Hudson River, seeing the number of slaves about the 
house. At that time, however, the system was just 
going out; it had lost its interesting features, and the 
slaves, still remaining at these old places, had become 
a source of care and anxiety to their owners. 

The charm of life in that day was its stability. 
There was no chance then {or parvenu ism — no stocks 
in which to dabble, no sudden fortunes made. There 
was but little commerce between the colony and the 
mother-country, and men who embarked in this busi- 
ness were contented to spend their lives in acquiring a 
competence. They never aspired to rival the landed 
families. With the latter, life flowed on from one gen- 
eration to another in the same even way. They lived 
on their broad lands, and, when they died, the eldest 
son inherited the family residence, while the others 
were portioned off with farms belonging to the estate, 
but which it could well spare. On their carriages and 
their silver were their arms, which they had brought 
with them from Europe, by which every one knew 
them, which were used as matters of course, and were 
distinctions no one ventured to assume unless entitled 
to them. Sometimes these were carved in stone and 
placed over their doors. This was the case with the 
Walton House, which we believe is still standing in 
Franklin Square (Pearl street) ; and, as we have al- 
ready mentioned, with the Kip's Bay House. The 
windows of the first Dutch church built in New York 

the same number ; William Beekman, two ; Rip Van Dam, six ; Mrs. Stuyvesant, 
five; Mrs. Kip, seven; David Provoost, three, &c." — Stone's "History of Nev^ 
York," p. 90. 



IN TIIF OI.riEN TIME. 29 

were filled with the arms of the families at whose 
expense it was erected. 

In 1774, John Adams, on his way to attend'the first 
Congress, stopped in New York. The honest Bos- 
tonian was very much struck with "the opulence and 
splendor of the city," and "the elegance of their mode 
of living," and, in his Journal, freely records his admi- 
ration. He speaks of " the elegant country-seats on 
the island ; " " the Broad Way, a fine street, very wide, 
and in a right line from one end to the other of the 
city;" "the magnificent new church then building, 
which was to cost /,'20,ooo;" the Bowling Green, 
which he describes as "the beautiful ellipse of land, 
railed in with solid iron, in the centre of which is a 
statue of His Majesty on horseback, very large, of 
solid lead, gilded with gold, on a pedestal of marble, 
very high." He records that " the streets of the town 
are vastly more regular and elegant than those of Bos- 
ton, and the houses are more grand, as well as neat." 

The most amusing display is when he is invited to 
one of these country-seats, "near Hudson's River." 
He writes: "A more elegant breakfast I never saw; 
rich plate, a very large silver coffee-pot, a very large 
silver tea-pot, napkins of the very finest materials, 
toast and bread and butter in great perfection. After 
breakfast a plate of beautiful peaches, another of pears, 
and a muskmelon, were placed on the' table." 

It is evident, however, from his Journal, that he saw 
little of the best families. He was not in a situation to 
be feted by them, for they had no sympathy with the 
object of his journey. His principal entertainers were 
two lawyers — Scott and Smith — who had grown 
wealthy by their profession. Among all he mentions 
as extending civilities to him, the only persons belong- 
ing to the aristocracy of the city were some members 



30 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

of the Livingston family, who, even then, were putting 
themselves forward as leaders in the coming move- 
ment. 

The Revolution broke up and swept away this social 
system. It ruined and drove off half the gentry of the 
province. The social history, indeed, of that event 
has never been written, and never will be. The con- 
querors wrote the story, and they were mostly " new 
men," who had as much love for those they dispos- 
sessed as the Puritans had for the Cavaliers of Eng- 
land, whom, for a time, they displaced. In a passage 
we have quoted from Sargent's "Life of Andre," the 
author says : " Most of the landed gentry of New York 
espoused the royal cause." And it was natural that it 
should be so, for most of them had for generations 
held office under the Crown. Their habits of life, too, 
had trained them to tastes wdiich had no sympathy 
with the levelling doctrines inaugurated by the new 
movement. They accordingly rallied around the king's 
standard; and, when it went down, they went down 
with it, and, in many cases, their names were blotted 
out of the land. 

We once read, in an old number of Blackwood's 
Magnzinc, some discussion about the impolitic course 
pursued by England towards her colonies. The re- 
marks about the manner in which she lost her /Ameri- 
can colonies w-ere peculiarly judicious. The writer 
says the Government should have formed an aristo- 
cracy in America, by giving titles, and thus gathering 
the great landed proprietors about the throne by new 
ties. These extensive landholders, previous to the 
Revolution, were as able to keep up the dignity of a 
title as were the English nobility of that day ; and the 
effect which would have been produced, in the strength- 
ening of their loyalty, is obvious. Had the head of 



I\ THE OLDEN TIME. 3 I 

the Livingston family been created Earl of Clermont, 
and that of the Lawrences been made Lord Newtown, 
would they have taken the side of the Revolutionists ? 
We trow not. Instead of this, these powerful landed 
families were neglected, until some of them became 
embittered against the Government. No title, as a 
mark of royal favor, was given to a single American, 
except a baronetcy to Sir William Johnson. 

Of a few landed families who took the popular side, 
perhaps the Livingstons and Schuylers occupied the 
leading position. The former had not been in favor 
with the Government, but were the political antagonists 
of the De Lanceys, by whom they were excluded from 
office. They therefore welcomed the new order of 
things. 

Religion, in those davs, had a oood deal to do with 
the state of parties. As far back as 1745, the De Lan- 
ceys were the leaders of the Church of England party, 
and the Livingstons of the Dissenters. Religious bit- 
terness was added, therefore, to that which was politi- 
cal. " In 1769" (says Stone, in his " Life of Sir W^il- 
liam Johnson"), " the contest was between the Church 
party and the Dissenters, the former being led by the 
De Lanceys and the latter by the Livingstons. The 
Church, having the support of the mercantile and ma- 
sonic interests, was triumphant ; and John Cruger, 
James De Lancey, Jacob Walton, and James Jauncey, 
were elected by the city." During the election a song 
was published in the German language, which became 
very popular with the Germans, the chorus of which 
was : 

" Maester Cruger, De Lancey, 
^[aester Walton and Jauncey." 

•■ The De Lancey interest," wrote Hugh Wallace, a 



T,2 NKW YORK SOCIETY 

member of the Council, to Sir William Johnson, " pre- 
vails in the House greatly, and they have given the 
Livingstons' interest proof of it, by dismissing P. Liv- 
ingston the House, as a non-resident." It was an old 
feud, therefore, which, at the Revolution, induced them 
to take different sides. 

To the popular side, also, went the Jays, the Law- 
rences, a portion of the Van Courtlandts, who were 
divided, a part of the Morris family, which was also 
divided (while Lewis Morris was one of the signers of 
the Declaration of Independence, his brother, Staats 
Morris, was a General in the British anny, and married 
the Dowager Duchess of Gordon), the Beekmans, and 
some few others. The " Patroon " — Mr. Van Rensse- 
laer — was fortunately a minor, and therefore, not being 
obliged to take either side, saved his manor. Many 
of the prominent leaders were from new families, made 
by the Revolution. Ah upturning of this kind is the 
time for new men. Peculiar circumstances brought 
some forward who otherwise would have had no avenue 
for action opened before them. Alexander Hamilton, 
for example, had just arrived in New York, a young 
man from the West Indies, when the popular outbreak 
gave him, at a public meeting, an opportunity of e.xhib- 
iting his peculiar talents. 

The history of a single family will show the course 
of events. Probably the most powerful family in the 
State, before the Revolution, was that of the De Lan- 
ceys. Descended from the aticienne noblesse of France, 
and holding large possessions, they had exerted a 
greater influence in the colony than any other family. 
James De Lancey administered the government of the 
colony for many years, till his death in 1760. Most of 
the younger members of the family were in the British 
army, previous to the Revolution. When that convul- 



IN liii-. (ii.i)i;\ 11. \n:. 33 

sion took place, they, of course, remained loyal, and 
became leaders on that side. Oliver De Lancey was 
a Brigadier-General, and organized the celebrated 
corps styled '' De Lancey's Battalion." His fine man- 
sion at Bloomingdale was burned, in consequence of 
his adherence to the royal cause. They forfeited their 
broad lands, and their names appeared no more in the 
future history of the State. Some fled to England, 
where they held high offices, and their tombs are now 
to be seen in the choir of Beverley Minster. Sir 
William De Lancey died at Waterloo, on the staff of 
the Duke of Wellington.* Just two months previous, 
he had been married to a daughter of .Sir Benjamin 
Hall ; and his friend Sir Walter Scott, thus alludes to 
him in his ode, "The Field of Waterloo": 

De Lancey changed Love's bridal wreath 
For laurels from the hand of death. 

The son of General De Lancey, Oliver De Lancey, 
Jr., who succeeded Andre as Adjutant-General oi the 
British army in America, rose through the grade of 
Lieutenant-General to that of General, and died, at the 

* The Duke of W'ellington, in conversation, gave this account of De Lancey's 
death : — 

" De Lancey was with nie and speaking t$ me when he was struck. We were 
on a point of land that overlooked the plain, and I had just been warned off by 
some soldiers (but as I saw well from it, and as two divisions were engaging below, 
I had said, ' Never mind,'), when a ball came leaping along enriiocliet, as it is call- 
ed, and striking him on the back, sent him many yards over the head of his horse. 
He fell on his face, and bounded upward and fell .igain. All the stafl' dismounted 
and ran to him; and when I came up, he said, ' Pray tell them to leave me and let 
me die in peace.' I had him conveyed to the rear, and two days afterwards, when, 
on my return from Brussels, I saw him in a barn, he spoke with such strength, that 
I said (for 1 had re]x>rted him among the killed), ' Why, De Lancey, you will have 
the advantage of Sir Condy in Castle Kockrent ; you will know what your friends 
said of you after deatli.' ' I hope I shall,' he rejjlied. Poor fellow ! We had 
known each other ever since we were boys. But I had no time to be sorry: I went 
on with the army and never saw him again." — " Recollections," by .Samuel Rogers. 
London, 1859. 

5 



34 NK^V VORR SOCIKTV 

beginning of this centur)-, nearly at tlie head of the 
EngHsh army-list. 

In 1847 the late Bishop of Western New York 
(William Heathcote De Lancey) told the writer a curi- 
ous story of his recovery of some of their old family 
papers. In the spring of that year, being in New 
York, a package was handed to the servant at the 
door by an old gentleman, on opening which the Bishop 
found an anonymous letter directed to him. The writer 
stated that, being in England between thirty and forty 
years before, he found some papers relating to the De 
Lancey family among some waste paper in the house 
where he was staying ; that he had preserved them, 
and, seeing by the newspapers that the Bishop was in 
the city, he now enclosed them to him. These the 
Bishop found to be: ist, the commission of James De 
Lancey as Lieutenant-Governor of the colony ; 2d, his 
commission as Chief-Justice of the colony ; 3d, the free- 
dom of the city of New York, voted to one of the fami- 
ly in 1730; 4th, a map of the lands owned by them in 
Westchester county and on New York Island, pre- 
pared by the Bishop's grandfather. He advertised in 
the New York papers, requesting an interview with his 
unknown correspondent, but there was no response, 
and he heard no more from him. 

Some branches of this family remained in New York, 
and we cannot point to a more striking evidence of the 
change wrought by the Revolution than the fact that, 
since that event, the name of De Lancey, once so 
prominent, is never found in the records of the Govern- 
ment. It is in the Church only that it has acquired 
eminence, in the person of the former distinguished 
Bishop of Western New York. 

This is the kind of story which might be told of 
manv other loyalist families. Ruined by confiscations, 



IX TllK OI.DKN riMK. 35 

they faded out of si^ht, and, being excluded from po- 
litical office, they were forgotten, and their very names 
would sound strange in the ears of the present gener- 
ation of New Yorkers. Many years ago, in the old 
country-house of a relative, the writer amused some 
days of a summer vacation by bringing down from the 
dust of a garret, where they had reposed for two gen- 
erations, the letters of one of these refugees, who, at 
the beeinning- of the Revolution, was obliged to seek 
safety on board a British ship-of-war off New York 
harbor (from whence he writes his farewell, commend- 
ine his wife and children to the care of the familv). and 
then made his home in England, until, as he hoped, 
" these calamities be overpast." It was sad to read 
his speculations, as night after night he attended the 
debates in Parliament and watched the progress of the 
war, and, to the last, confidently trusted in the success 
of the royal arms, which alone could replace him in the 
position from which, he had been driven into exile. 
When these hopes were ultimately crushed, a high ap- 
pointment w-as offered him by Government, but he pre- 
ferred to return to his owm land to share the straitened 
circumstances of his family, and be buried with his 
fathers. 

The withdrawal of so many of the gentry from the 
country, and the worldly ruin of so many more, was 
necessarily detrimental to its social refinement. It was 
taking away the high-toned dignity of the landed pro- 
prietors, and substituting in its place the restless aspira- 
tions of men who had to make their fortunes and posi- 
tion, and get forward in life. Society lost, therefore, 
much of its ease and orracefulness. Mrs. Grant, to 
whose work we have already alluded, who in her youth 
had seen »New York society as far back as 1760, and 
lived to know what it was after the peace, thus speaks 



36 NEW YORK SOCIETY 

of the change: "Mildness of manners, refinement of 
mind, and all the softer Yirtues that spring up in the 
cultivated paths of social life, nurtured by generous 
affections, were undoubtedly to be found in the un- 
happy loyalists. . . . Certainly, however neces- 
sary the ruling powers might find it to carry their sys- 
tem of exile into execution, it has occasioned to the 
country an irreparable privation. What the loss of 
the Huguenots was to commerce and manufactures in 
France, that of the loyalists was to religion, literature, 
and amenity in America. The silken threads were 
drawn out of the mixed web of society, which has ever 
since been comparatively coarse and homely."* 

This is somewhat of an exaggeration. The tone of 
society was, indeed, impaired, but not lost. There 
were still enough of the old families remaining to give 
it dignity, at least for another generation. The com- 
munity could not suddenly become democratic, or throw 
off all its old associations and habits of reverence. As 
a writer on that day says, people were "habituated to 
take off their hats to gentlemen who were got up re- 
gardless of expense, and who rode about in chariots 
drawn by four horses." It took a long while for the 
community to learn to act on the maxim that " all men 
are created equal." Not, indeed, until those were 
swept away who had lived in the days of the Revolu- 
tion, did this downward tendency become very evident. 
Simultaneously, too, with their departure came a set 
of the noiivcatix riches, which the growing facilities of 
New York for making commercial fortunes brought 
forward, and thus, by degrees, was ushered in — the 
age of gaudy wealth. 

The final blow, indeed, to this stately old society 
was given by the French Revolution. We know how 

* "American Lady," p. 330. 



IN THE OIKEX TIMK. T)"! 

everything dignitiecl in societ)- was tlien swept away 
in the wild fury of democracy, but the present genera- 
tion cannot conceive of the intense feeling which that 
event produced in our own country. France had been 
our old ally, England our old foe. We must side with 
the former in her struggles against tyranny. It be- 
came a political test. The Republicans adopted it, and 
insensibly there seemed to grow up the idea that re- 
finement and courtesy in life were at variance with the 
true party-spirit. In this way democratic rudeness 
crept into social life, and took the place of the aristo- 
cratic element of former days. Gradually it went down 
into the lower strata of society, till all that reverence 
which once characterized it was gone. 

The manners of an individual at last became an evi- 
dence of his political views. Goodrich, in his " Recol- 
lections," speaking on this very point, gives an amusing 
instance of it. A clergyman in Connecticut, who was 
noted for his wit, riding along one summer day, came 
to a brook, where he paused to let his horse drink, 
fust then a stranger rode into the stream from the op- 
posite direction, and, as his horse began to drink also, 
the two men were brought face to face. 

" How are you, priest?" said the stranger. 

" How are you, democrat ? " inquired the parson. 

" How do you know I am a democrat ? " said one. 

" How do you know I am a priest? " said the other. 

" I know you to be a priest by your dress," said the 
stranger. 

■' And I know you to be a democrat by \'our ad- 
dress," said the parson. 

Even the dress was made the exponent of party 
views, as much as it had been by the Cavaliers and 
Puritans of England. As republican principles gained 
ground, large Avigs and powder, cocked hats, breeches 



NEW voKK socip:tv 



and shoe-buckles, were replaced by short hair, panta- 
loons, and shoe-strings. It is said that the Marquis 
de Breze, master of ceremonies at Versailles, nearly 
died of fright at the first pair of shoes, divested of 
buckles, which he saw on the feet of a revolutionary 
minister ascending the stairs to a royal Icvec. He 
rushed over to Dumouriez, then Minister of War. 
" He is actually entering," exclaimed the Marquis, 
" with ribbons in his shoes ! " Dumouriez, himself one 
of the incendiaries of the Revolution, solemnlj' said, 
" Tout est fini ! " — " The game is up ; the monarchy is 
gone." And so it was. This was only one of the 
siens of the times. Buckles and kings were extin- 
guished together. 

Such beine the feelinsfs of the sans ciiloites in P^rance, 
the favorers of jacobinism in this country were not 
slow to imitate them. Jefferson eschewed breeches 
and wore pantaloons. He adopted leather strings in 
his shoes instead of buckles, and his admirers trum- 
peted it as a proof of democratic simplicity. Wash- 
ington rode to the Capitol in a carriage drawn by four 
cream-colored horses with servants in livery. All this 
his successor gave up, and even abolished the Presi- 
dent's levees, the latter of which were afterwards re- 
stored by Mrs. Madison. Thus the dress, which had 
for generations been the sign and symbol of a gentle- 
man, gradually waned away, till society reached that 
charming state of equality in which it became impos- 
sible, by any outward costume, to distinguish masters 
from servants. John Jay says, in one of his letters, 
that with small-clothes and buckles the high tone of 
society departed. 

In the writer's early day this system of the past was 
just going out. Wigs and powder and queues, breeches 
and buckles, still lingered among the older gentlemen 



IX riiK oi.DKX iiMi:. 39 

— vestiges of an age which was just vanishing away. 
But the high-toned feeHng of the last century was still 
in the ascendant, and had not yet succumbed to the 
worship of mammon which characterizes this age. 
There was still in New York a reverence for the colo- 
nial families ; and the prominent political men — like Du- 
ane, Clinton, Golden, Radcliff, Hoffman, and Living- 
ston — were generally gentlemen by birth and social 
standing. The time had not yet come when this was 
to be an objection to an individual in a political career. 
The leaders were men whose names were historical in 
the state, and they influenced society. The old fami- 
lies still formed an association among themselves, and 
intermarried one generation after another. Society 
was therefore very restricted. The writer remembers, 
in his childhood, when he went out with his father for 
his usual afternoon drive, he knew every carriage they 
met on the avenues. 

The gentlemen of that day knew each other well, for 
they had grown up together, and their associations in 
the past w-ere the same. Yet, what friendships for 
after-life did these associations form ! How different 
this from the intimacy between Mr. Smith and Mr. 
Thompson, when they knew nothing of each other's 
antecedents, have no subjects in common but the mo- 
ney market, and never heard of each other until the 
last year, when some lucky speculation in stocks raised 
them from their 'Tow estate," and enabled them to 
purchase houses " up-town," and set up their car- 
riages ! 

There was in that day none of the show and glitter 
of modern times ; but there was with many of these 
families, particularly with those who had retained their 
landed estates, and w^ere still living in their old family 
homes, an elegance which has never been rivalled in 



40 XKw YORK socir/rv 

other parts of the country. In his early days the 
writer has been much at the South ; has stayed at 
Mount Vernon, when it was yet held by the Washing- 
tons ; with Lord Fairfax's family at Ashgrove and Van- 
cluse ; with the Lees in Virginia, and with the aristo- 
cratic planters of South Carolina ; but he has never 
elsewhere seen such elegance of living as was formerly 
exhibited by the old families of New York. 

Gentlemen then were great diners-out. Their asso- 
ciations naturally led to this kind of intimacy, when 
almost the same set constantly met together. Giving 
dinners was then a science, and a gentleman took as 
much pride in the excellence of his wine-cellar as he 
did in his equipage or his library. This had its evils, 
it is true, and led to long sittings over the table, and 
an excess of conviviality which modern customs have 
fortunately corrected. 

There was a punctiliousness, too, in their intercourse, 
even amonof the most intimate, which formed a stranpfe 
contrast to the familiarity of modern society. Gentle- 
men were guarded in what they said to each other, for 
those were duelling days, and a hasty speech had to 
be atoned for at Hoboken. Stories are still handed 
down of disputes at the dinner-table which led to hos- 
tile meetings, but which, in our day, would not have 
been remembered next morning. In an obituar)- sketch 
of one of this set, published at his death twenty-five 
3'ears ago, when speaking of the high tone which then 
characterized society, the writer said: "Perhaps the 
liability, which then existed, of being held personally 
answerable for their words, false as the principle may 
have been, produced a courtesy not known in these 
days." 

One thing is certain — that there was a high tone 
prevailing at that time, which is now nowhere seen. 



IX THE OI.DEN TIME. 4I 

The community then looked up to the public men with 
a degree of reverence which has never been felt for 
those who succeeded them. They were the last of a 
race which does not now exist. With them died the 
stateliness of colonial times. Wealth came in and 
created a social distinction which took the place of 
family, and thus society became vulgarized. 

During the last year we have witnessed the depar- 
ture of one — Gulian C. Verplanck — who was, perhaps, 
the last prominent member of the generation which 
has gone. W'here can we point to any one of those 
now living, like him, surrounded by the elevating asso- 
ciations of the past, distinguished in public life, and a 
ripe scholar in literature and theology ? The old his- 
torical names of Jay and Duer and Hoffman, and a few 
more of colonial times, are still upheld among us by 
their sons, who are showing, in the third generation, 
the high talents of those who had gone before them ; 
" but what are they among so many ! " 

" Rari nantes in giirgite vasto." 

The influences of the past are fast vanishing away, 
and our children will look only to the shadowy future. 
The very rule by which we estimate individuals has 
been entirely altered. The inquiry once was, "Who 
is he?" Men now ask the question, "How much is 
he worth ? " Have we gained by the change ? 

Is it stranee that the writer answers in himself that 
description in Horace — " Laudator acti temporis, me 
puero?" As years gather round him, and the shadows 
deepen in his path, he instinctively turns more and 
more from the "living Present" to commune wuth the 
"dead Past." Many, however, to whom he has re- 
ferred in these pages, will be to most of his readers 



42 NEW YORK SOCIETY IN THE OLDEN TIME. 

only names, while to him they are realities — living and 
breathing men ; and, as he thinks of them, he believes 
there is no delusion in the conviction that, for elegance 
and refinement, for all the graces which elevate and 
ennoble life, they have left no successors. The out- 
ward pressure is now too democratic. Most of the 
prominent men, also, of the present day, want the asso- 
ciations of the past. 

As Edward IV. stood on the tower of Warwick 
Casde, and saw marching through the park below him 
the mighty host of retainers who, at the summons of 
the ereat Earl of Warwick, had gathered round him, 
and then thought how powerless, in comparison, were 
the new nobles with whom he had attempted to sur- 
round his throne, he is said to have muttered to him- 
self, "After all, you cannot make a great baron out of 
a new lord ! " And so we would say. You cannot make 
out of the new millionaire what was exhibited by the 
gentlemen of our old colonial families ! 

Commerce, indeed, is fast taking the place of the 
true old chivalry with all its high associations. It is 
impossible, in this country, for St. Germain to hold its 
own against the Bourse. Money-getting is the great 
object of life in this practical age, and, every month, 
the words which Halleck wrote so many years ago are 
becoming more true : 

These are not romantic times 
So beautiful in Spenser's rhymes, 

So dazzling to the dreaming boy ; 
Ours are the days of fact, not fable, 
Of Knights, but not of the Round Table, 

Of Baillie Jarvis, not Rob Roy. 
And noble name and cultured land. 
Palace and park, and vassal band, 
Are powerless to notes of hand 

Of Rothschild or the Barings. 



TRACES 



AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 




RICHMOND HILL HOUSE, N. Y., IN I??^- 



TRACES 

OF 

AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 



Thev sa)- in England that Burke's Pceraoc is " the 
Englishman's Bible." He certainly pores over it with 
a devotion which, had it been the Bible, would have 
prepared him to be a Professor of Biblical Interpreta- 
tion in a Theological Seminary. The aristocracy have 
this immense crimson-bound volume in their libraries 
because it gives their own family history. The middle 
class parade it on their centre-tables because its pos- 
session seems in some way, they cannot define how, 
to associate them with the titled class. Then, if they 
should happen to see a live lord, it is a great satisfac- 
tion, on their return home, to open Burke and learn 
all about him. It makes them almost feel as if they 
were acquainted with him. 

Burke, it is true, gives the history of these families, 
but then there is added to it an immense amount of the 
Romance of History. The old Norman nobility of 
England have most of them died out, and it is strange 
to see, in Shirley's Noble and Gentle Men of England, 
how few families are now remaining, in the male line, 
of those who occupied any prominent position in the 
days of the wars of York and Lancaster. The great 
Percy family, for example, has three times become ex- 
tinct in the male line. Then, some one who had mar- 
ried its heiress took the name of Percy, and had the 
title of Duke of Northumberland revived for his bene- 



46 TRACKS OF American' lineage in England. 

fit. The last time this occurred was in 1750, when it 
was done for one of the Smithson family, who had 
married the daughter and only child of the last Duke. 
Thus, new shoots are grafted on the old lines. 

Besides this, new men are constantly rising up and 
Avinning their way into the upper class, and these must 
be furnished with pedigrees. So Burke begins per- 
haps by stating, that "one of this name flourished in 
Kent, tcvip. Henry III." To be sure there is a dread- 
ful hiatus between this imaginary character and (cnip. 
Viciorics, when the new lord makes his appearance, 
but there is a sort of uncertain glamour thrown over it 
which, without any reason, seems to connect the pres- 
ent with the distant past. Still, with all these draw- 
backs, Burke is a very valuable record, and we cannot 
understand the history of England without knowing 
something of the history of its great families. 

Then, besides Burke's Peerage is his Landed Gentry, 
a work of equal interest and value to the historical 
student. Many of these untitled families have lived 
on their broad lands since the Norman conquest. You 
turn, for instance, to the Fitzherbert family, and read 
of the present proprietor of their estates — " Mr. Fitz- 
herbert is the 26th Lord of the Manor of Norbury, and 
the loth Lord of Swinnerton." Many of these families 
have for generations refused peerages, preferring to 
be Old Commoners rather than New Lords. 

The third volume, to complete the set, is Burke's 
Extinct Peerages, a record of families which possessed 
titles, traced down to the death of the last holder of 
the title. 

What interest have we Americans in these volumes? 
Apparently very little. And yet, in turning them over, 
we every little while light on some scrap of American 
family history, giving a portion of the records of fami- 



TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 4/ 

lies who are descended from these old stocks, and 
whose history would not be complete without this no- 
tice of the parent tree ; or, what we find is mingled in 
some way with the annals of our own country, so that 
it throws new light on some point in our affairs, or 
gives a completion of detail to some portion of Ameri- 
can History. 

Let us take an example of this — Benedict Arnold. 
His name is unfortunately "familiar in our ears as 
household words." Every school-boy knows the story 
of his treason, as it mingles with the sad narrative of 
Major Andre's life and death. We know that England 
rewarded his betrayal of his trust with the rank of 
Major-General in her service, the same which he had 
held in our army. But the war ended, and he went to 
Europe with her returning forces, and what is after- 
wards known of him ? There are one or two anecdotes 
floating about — such as the account of his duel with 
Lord Balcarras — and that is all. We will guarantee 
there is not one American in a thousand can tell any- 
thing with regard to his future. As far as we are 
concerned — as Carlyle would express it — "he disap- 
peared into infinite space." 

Have not some of our readers thought of this; 
wished to know the subsequent history of the Arnold 
family, and wondered Avhether his treason enabled 
them to prosper in worldly matters, or whether "the 
sin of the father was visited on the children to the third 
and fourth generation " ? We know no source from 
which this want can be supplied, except by Burke's 
Lauded Gentry. We turn to the name of Arnold and 
find this history of the family : — 

General Benedict Arnold, m. 8 April, 1779, Margaret, dau. of 
Edward Shippen, Chief Judge of Pennsylvania, and died in 1801, 
having had issue. 



48 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN AMERICA. 

Edward Shijipen, Lieut. 6th Bengal Cavalry, and Paymaster of 
Mutra, d. at Dinapore in India, 13 Dec, 1813. 

James Robertson, Lieut.-General, K. H. and K. Crescent, m. Vir- 
ginia, d. of Bartlett Goodrich, Esq., of Saling (Jrove, Essex, which 
lady died 14 July, 18 13. 

George, l.ieut.-Col. 2d Bengal Cavalry, died in India i Nov., 1828. 

William Fetch, of whom presently. 

Sophia, m. Col. Pownall Phipps, E. I. C. Service (of the Mulgrave 
family). 

Wm. Fetch Arnold, Esq., of I.ittle Missenden Abbey, Capt. 12th 
Lancers, b. 25 June, 1794 ; m. 19 May, 1819, Elizabeth Cecelia, only 
dau. of Alexander Ruddach, Esq., of Tobago, and had issue. 

Edward Gladwin, of whom presently. 

William Trail, h. 23 Oct., 1826, Capt. 4th Regt. 

Margaret Stuart, m. Rev. Robert H. S. Rogers. 

Elizabeth Sophia, m. Rev. Bryant Burgess. 

Georgiana Phipps, m. Rev. John Stephenson. 

Rev. Edward Gladwin Arnold, of Little Missencen Abbey, Co. 
Bucks, Rector of Stapleford, Herts, /'. 25 April, 1823; m. 27 April, 
1852, Charlotte Georgiana, eldest daughter of Lord Henry Chol- 
mondeley. 

Seat, Little Missenden Abbey, Co. Bucks. 

Here we have the whole story minutely .set forth, 
from the arch traitor himself down to his grandson, the 
present representative. It seems that his sons held 
high offices in the army, and the family had been en- 
abled to take its place among the English Landed 
Gentry, and to hold it to the present time. In a world- 
ly point of view, there is probably hardly a family of 
the American Generals who remained faithful in the 
"times which tried men's souls," which at the present 
day is as well off as that of Benedict Arnold. 

Let us take another example — Sir William John- 
son. There has always been a great deal of romance 
associated with his life. Settling on the Mohawk, 
among the Indians, he obtained an influence over the 
Si.x Nations which no other white man on this Conti- 
nent has possessed. In the old French war he was 



TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN AMERICA. 49 

able to array these powerful tribes on the side of the 
English, and under his command they secured to the 
Colonial troops the victory over the French under 
Baron Dieskau at Lake George, and thus this raid into 
the colonies was hurled back. F"or this he was re- 
warded with a Baronetcy. He resided at Johnson Hall 
in a kind of barbaric splendor, which was most capti- 
vating to the Indian chiefs who were his constant visit- 
ors. The late Wm. L. Stone, of New York, published 
his life in two volumes, and Paulding made him a pro- 
minent character in his novel of Tlic Dutchman s Fire- 
side. He died just as the Revolutionary War began, 
and it is asserted that his life was shortened by the vio- 
lent struggle through which he, like many other lead- 
ing men, was obliged to pass in deciding between the 
cause of his old friends and that of the Government to 
■which he owed his honors. 

His son and successor, Sir John Johnson, seems to 
have been troubled with no such scruples, but at once 
arrayed against the Colonists all the Indian tribes over 
which he had influence. For years his inroads kept in 
fear the whole border down to the very surburbs of 
Albany, and terrible were the scenes enacted in many 
a solitary hamlet, and even in the large town of Sche- 
nectady, when they were sacked and burned by his 
wild warriors. Their record is graphically written in 
Stone's Life of Brandt. When the war ended he re- 
treated into Canada, abandoning his great possessions 
and leaving Johnson Hall, which still stands, a monu- 
ment of the family. 

But what was his future history, and how fared it 
with the family who, for loyalty, thus abandoned their 
wide lands ? Few indeed had sacrificed as much as 
they did for this cause. We turn to Burke's Peerage, 
and here is the record of the next generations : — - 
7 



50 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

William Johnson, Esq., born at Smithtown, Co. Meath. descend- 
ed from an Irish family, was adopted by his maternal uncle, Sir Peter 
Warren, K.B., and went out with him to North America, where he 
rose to the rank of a Col. in the army, and distinguished himself as a 
military commander during the first American war, and as a negotiator 
with Indian tribes; he was created a Baronet 27 Nov., 1755. He 
d. 11 July, 1774, aged 59, at his seat, Johnson Hall, New York, leav- 
ing, by Catherine Wisenberg, his wife, 

John, his heir, 

Anne, m. to Col. Daniel Clauss, of North America, and //. about 
1798. 

Mary, ;«. Col. Gray Johnson, and had two daughters, Mary, wife of 
Gen. Colin Campbell ; and Julia. 

The son and heir, 

II. Sir John, of Mount Johnson, Montreal, Superintendent-Gen- 
eral, and Inspector General of Indian Affairs in British North Ameri- 
ca, Colonel-in-Chief of the six battalions of the militia of the Eastern 
Township of Lower Canada, was knighted at St. James, London, 22 
Nov., 1765. He m. 30 June, 1773, Mary, dau. of John Watts, Esq., 
some time President of the Council at New York, and by her had 
issue, 

1. William, Lieut. -Col., b. 1775; m. 1802, Susan, dau. of Stephen 
De Lancey, Governor of Tobago, and left issue, 

Charlotte, tn., in 1820, to Alexander, Count Ealmain, Russian Com- 
missioner at St. Helena. 

2. Adam Gordon, 3d Baronet. 

3. James Slephen, Capt. 28th Regt., killed at Badajos. 

4. Robert Thomas, drowned in Canada, 1812. 

5. Warren, Major 68th Regt., li. 1813. 

7. John, of Point Oliver, Montreal, Col. Comm. 6th battalion of 
militia, /'. 8 Aug., 1782, m. 10 Feb., 1825, Mary Deane, dau. of 
Richard Dillon, Esq., of Montreal ; and d. 23 June, 1841, leaving 
issue, 

William George, present Baronet. 

7. Charles Christopher, b. 29 Oct., 1798, Lieut.-Col. in the army. 
Knight of the 2d class of the Prussian Order of the Lion and Sun ; in. 
1818, Susan, eldest dau. of Admiral Sir Edward Griffith, of North- 
brook House, Hants, and d. 30 Sept., 1854. 

Sir John died Jan., 1830, and was succeeded by his eldest surviv- 
ing son. 

III. Sir Adam Gordon, Lieut.-Col. of 6th battalion of militia, b. 
6 May, 1781, d. ufim., 21 May, 1843, and was succeeded by his 
nephew, William George. 



TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 5 I 

IV. Sir William George Johnson, of Twickenham, Co. Middle- 
sex, an officer in the Royal Artillery, b. 19 Dec, 18,50, succeeded as 
4th Baronet, at the decease of his uncle in May, 1843. 

They too have preserved their position, but at the 
end of the lineage, in Burke, there is no Scat given, as 
usual, and we presume, therefore, the Baronet is land- 
less, and has no compensation for the wide manors his 
family once held on the pleasant Mohawk. 

Sometimes, when no lineage of a family is given, we 
trace the name through various intermarriages. This 
is the case with the De Lanceys, Huguenots from 
France, so prominent in New York, until they were 
crushed by the confiscations which followed the Revo- 
lution. One of them, as we see above in the Johnson 
family, is mentioned as marrying a son of Sir John 
Johnson. The name occurs again in another family, 
for after the death of her first husband we find her mar- 
rying Lieut.-General Sir Hudson Lowe, K. C. B., so 
well known as the Governor of St. Helena during the 
imprisonment of Napoleon. Her brother. Sir William 
Howe De Lancey, died at Waterloo on the Staff of 
the Duke of Wellington. Another of the family mar- 
ried Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Draper, and another Field- 
Marshal Sir David Dundas. Another is recorded as 
the wife of Sir Julius Clifton, Bart. In this way it is 
that here and there we meet with traces of this old 
loyalist family. 

At the close of the last century, Sir John Temple 
came to this country as British Consul-General. He 
married in Boston, and his descendants, in different 
lines, under various names, are widely diffused through 
New York. This is Burke's record : — ■ 

Sir John Temple, born in 1730, m. 20 Jan., 1767, Elizabeth, dau. 
of James Bowdoin, E3q., Governor of the State of Massachusetts, and 
had issue, 



52 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

Grenville, his successor. 

James, b. 7 June, 1776, who assumed the surname of Bowdoin, 
pursuant to the desire of his maternal uncle. 

Elizabeth Bowdoin, m. in 1786, Thomas Lindell Winthrop, Esq., 
Boston. 

Augusta, in. to Lieut.-Col. Palmer, of 8th Hussars. 

Sir Grenville Temple, b. 10 Oct., 1768, m. 20 March, 1797, 
Elizabeth, dau. of Col. George Watson of Boston, and had issue, 

Grenville, late Baronet. 

Sir John Temple died in 1796, and his monument 
can now be seen in the chancel of St. Paul's Church, 
New York, with the arms and punning motto, templa 
QU.A.M dilecta (the opening words of the Latin version 
of Ps. Ixxxiv.), " Temples, how lovely ! " 

In the romantic story of Major Andre we learn that 
it was at the residence of Beverley Robinson, oppo- 
site West Point, that he met Arnold. The house is 
still standing unaltered from that day. The owner's 
family were well-known loyalists. Emigrating from 
England in the reign of Charles II., Christopher Rob- 
inson was Secretary of the Colony, and his son, John 
Robinson, was President of the Council of Virginia, 
and married Catherine, dau. of Robert Beverley, Esq. 

From one of his sons the New York family de- 
scended. At the close of the Revolution they retired 
to New Brunswick and Canada, where Burke thus gives 
the history of the present head : — 

Sir John Beverley Robinson, Bart., of Beverley House, in the 
city of Toronto, Chancellor of Trinity College in the Province. 

Sir John was appointed Acting Attomey-General of Upper Canada, 
in November, 1812 ; Solicitor-General in March, 1815 ; Attorney- 
General in February, 1818 ; and Chief Justice of Upper Canada, 13 
July, 1829. In November, 1850, he was appointed a Companion of 
the Order of the Bath, and created a Baronet, by patent, September 
21, 1854. 



TRACES OK AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 53 

Another branch remained in New York, where the 
name is still held in honor in the community. 

In turning- over the old volumes of Burke's Peerage, 
we find the lineage of another former New York family, 
the Ingrahams. 

The records of this family begin with Ranulf, .the son 
of Ingel'ram or Ing'ram, who was sheriff of Nottingham 
and Derby in the beginning of the reign of Henry II., 
as were his sons Robert and William. Robert In- 
gram, Knight, whose arms are painted at Temple 
Newsam, was of so great eminency in the reign of 
Henry III. that the Prior and Convent of Lenton 
granted to him a yearly rent out of their lands at 
Sheynton and Nottingham for his military services in 
their defence. 

In the reign of Charles I. Sir Arthur Ingram, of 
Temple Newsam, was prominent as a Cavalier. On 
the triumph of the Parliament, he saved his estate by 
the fact that he married a daughter of Lord Viscount 
Fairfax, of Gilling, and his eldest son had married a 
daughter of Montague, Earl of Manchester, both Par- 
liamentary leaders. Sir Arthur died in 1655, six years 
before the restoration of Charles II. On the Kind's 
return, he created Sir Arthur's eldest son Henry, Vis- 
count Irwin.* The title remained in the family until 
1778, when, on the death of Charles Ingram, ninth Vis- 
count Irwin, without sons, it became extinct. Hence- 
forth the history of the family is carried on in Burke's 
Landed Gentry. The estate descended to the Mar- 
chioness of Hertford, daughter of the last Viscount, and 
from her to her sister, Mrs. Meynell, whose son took 

* The portraits of Sir Arthur Ingram, in Cavalier dress, of his son Henry, first 
Viscount Irwin, in full armor, and his grandson Arthur, second Viscount Irwin, in 
half armor (all nearly full length), are in the collection of the Bishop of California, 
in San Francisco. 



54 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

the name of Ingram, and his son is now the possessor 
of Temple Newsam. 

The American Ingrahams — the spelling of the name 
having been changed after their settlement in this coun- 
try — are descended from Arthur Ingram, second son of 
Sir Arthur and youngest brother of the first Viscount. 
He married a daughter of Sir John Mallory. At the 
Revolution, the New York branch of this family was 
represented by Duncan Ingraham, Esq., of Greenvale 
Farm, near Poughkeepsie, Dutchess Co. He was a 
loyalist, and went to Europe, where he resided, in 
Paris, until the peace of 1784. President John Adams 
frequently mentions him in his diary, in Paris, in 1779. 
In 1784 he returned to this country, conformed to the 
Government, and died at his place, on the Hudson, 
in 1807. This family is now extinct in New York, and 
is represented by Commodore Duncan N. Ingraham, 
of Charleston, South Carolina, who was distinguished, 
in 1853, by his gallantry in the harbor of Smyrna, in 
the controversy with the Austrian vessels of war. 

We turn to another New York family — the Pierre- 
PONTS. They are of Norman origin, Robert de Pierre- 
pont having come over to England with the Conqueror. 
Pierrepont was a designation taken by the head of the 
family, from a stone bridge built by him in Normandy 
in the time of Charlemagne, to take the place of a ferry, 
which was then considered a great achievement. 

In the time of Edward I., Sir Henry de Pierrepont, 
then possessed of large landed estates, married Annona 
de Manvers, by whom he acquired the Lordship of 
Holme, in the County of Nottingham, now called 

HoLME-PlERREPONT. 

Sir George PierrepontofHolme-Pierrepont had three 
sons, from the elder of whom descended the Dukes of 
Kingston. From the younger son was descended 



TRACES OK AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 55 

John Pierrepont, who came to Roxbury, Mass., and his 
eldest son was the Rev. James Pierrepont, of New 
Haven. During the American Revohition, the second 
Duke of Kingston died without issue, when the eldest 
line of the descendants of Rev. James Pierrepont, of 
New Haven, became rightful heir to the dignities and 
estates. The brilliant and celebrated Duchess of 
Kingston, whose marriage with the Duke the collateral 
relatives attempted to set aside, sent over to America 
and offered her influence in sustaining the cause of the 
American heirs. It was, however, during the troubles 
of the Revolution, and no steps were taken. 

Lady Frances Pierrepont, sister of the second Duke 
of Kingston, married Sir Philip Meadows, and her son 
assumed the name of Pierrepont, and took the estates, 
though he could not inherit the titles. 

Of the branch in this country, some of our most em- 
inent men have been descendants of James Pierrepont 
of New Haven. One daughter married the eminent 
divine. President Jonathan Edwards. The celebrated 
Pierrepont Edwards was her son. Judge Ogden Ed- 
wards of New York, Governor Henry W. Edwards of 
Connecticut, and Timothy Dwight, D.D., President of 
Yale College, were her grandsons. The New Haven 
branch still occupies the old mansion on part of the 
estate granted to James Pierrepont in 1684, and has 
the original portrait of their ancestor painted in 1711. 

The New York branch is represented in Brooklyn, 
Long Island, and at Pierrepont Manor, in Western 
New York, by the descendants of Hezekiah, sixth son 
of the Rev. James Pierrepont. 

Perhaps three of the most historical English descents 
of American families are those of the Barclays, Liv- 
ingstons, and Lawrences, of New York. Each of them 
has a proved pedigree of more than 700 years. The 



56 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

Barclays prove their descent from Theobald de Ber- 
keley in mo. From him they are traced down* to 
David Barclay, of Urie, of whom Burke gives the fol- 
lowing notice : — 

David Barclay, born in 1610, Colonel under Gustavus Adolphus, 
purchased, in 1648, the estate of Urie, from William, Earl Marischal. 
He was eldest son of David Barclay, of Mathers, the representative 
of the old home of Barclay, oi Mathers. He m. Katherine, daughter 
of Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonstown, and had, with two daughters, 
Lucy and Jean, m. to Sir William Cameron, of Lochiel, three sons, 
Robert, his heir. John, who settled in America, and David. 

P'rom this son John is derived the American branch. 
It is curious to see how soon the line became mingled 
up with the familiar names of our old New York fami- 
lies. We will trace it for a couple of generations. The 
great grandson of John Barclay was the Rev. Henry 
Barclay, D.D., Rector of Trinity Church, New York, 
who died 1 764. He married Mary, daughter of Colonel 
Ruteers, of New York, and had issue — 

Cornelia, vi. Col. Stephen De Lancey. 

Anna, m. Col. Beverley Robinson. 

Thomas, m. Susan, daughter of Peter De Lancey, 
Esq. 

The children of Thomas Barclay were — 

Eliza, m. Schuyler Livingston, Esq. 

De Lancey, ;;/. Mary, widow of Gurney Barclay, 
M.P. 

Susan, m. Peter G. Stuyvesant, Esq. 

Thomas, m. Catharine, daughter of Walter Chan- 
ning, Esq., of Boston. 

We turn now to the Livingston family of New York. 
Few American families have so distinguished a lineage. 
The history of the elder branch, the attainted Earl of 

* "Nicoll's Peerages" aiid " Holgate's Genealogies." 



•IKACKS OK AMKRUAN 1,1 \ K A( 1 K IN KNCI.AND. 



.1/ 



Linlithofow, can be tound in Burke's Exit net Peerages. 
The present representative of the family in Scotland is 
a Baronet, and his lineage is given b\' Burke in his 
Peerapc. 

The family is descended from Livingius, a Hungarian 
nobleman, who came over to Scotland in the suite of 
Margaret, Queen of King Malcolm III., about 1068. 
From that time their names were prominent in all the 
political and warlike movements in Scotland. Sir 
Alexander Livingston, of Calendar, was Judiciary of 
Scotland. His son. Sir James Livingston, had the 
appointment of Captain of the Castle of .Stirling, with 
the tuition of the young King, James II., committed to 
him by his father. He died about 1467. 

The family then received the title of Lord Livingston, 
which, in the seventh Lord Livingston, was merged in 
the higher title of Earl of Linlithgow, which title was 
transmitted through five descendants, till it was for- 
feited with the estates in 1715, for their devotion to the 
Stuarts. Unlike most of these attainted Scotch titles,^ 
it has not been restored, as the present heir declines 
the barren and e.xpensive honor. 

In 1647, Sir James Livingston was created Earl of 
Newburgh, a tide which has since been absorbed in 
the old \'enitian House of Giustiniani, with which 
they intermarried. The sixth Lord Livingston fought 
for Queen Mary at Langdale, and his sister, Mary 
Livingston, was one of the four Marys who were 
maids of honor to the Queen. As an old Scotch song 
recoimts it — 



' Last night the Queen had four Maries, , 
To-night she'll hae but three, 
There was Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton, 
And Mary Livingstone, and me." 



58 TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

In March, 1650, John Livingston was sent as a Com- 
missioner to Breda, to negotiate terms for tlie restora- 
tion of Charles II. He died in 1692, and his son, 
Robert Livingston, emigrated to America in 1676. He 
became, July 18, 1683, the first proprietor of the Manor 
of Livingston, on the Hudson. From that day the 
name has been identified with every movement in the 
State, and (what should be a patent of nobility in this 
country) it is found among the Signers of the Declara- 
tion of Independence. 

We finish this list with the Lawrence family of New 
York. Their first ancestor of whom mention is made 
in the English Records, was Robert Laurens, Knight 
of Ashton Hall, Lancastershire. He accompanied 
Richard Coeur de Lion in his famous Crusade to 
Palestine, and distinguished himself at the siege of St. 
Jean d'Acre in 1191, by being the first to plant the 
banner of the Cross on the battlements of that town. 
For this he received the honor of knighthood from 
.King Richard, and also a coat of arms with the fire 
cross (cross ragiily gjilcs), which is borne by his des- 
cendants in this country to this day. His family inter- 
married with that of the Washingtons, his grandson, 
Sir James Laurens, having married Matilda Washing- 
ton, in the reign of Henry III. 

After this the family became eminent in England. 
Sir William Lawrence, born in 1395, was killed in bat- 
tle in France, in 1455, with Lionel, Lord Welles. Sir 
John Lawrence was one of the commanders of a wing 
of the English army at Flodden Field, under Sir Ed- 
mund Howard, in 1513. .Sir John Lawrence, the ninth 
in lineal descent from the above Sir Robert Laurens, 
possessed thirty-five manors, the revenue of which, in 
1491, amounted to ^'6,000 sterling /rr annum. Hav- 
ing, however, killed a Gendeman Usher of Henry VII., 



TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 59 

he was outlawed and died in France, when, Ashton 
Hall and his other estates passed, by royal decree, to 
his relatives Lord Monteagle and Lord Gerard. 

Another member of this family was Henry Lawrence, 
one of the Patentees of Connecticut in 1635, with Lord 
Say and Seal, Lord Brook, Sir Arthur Hasselrigg, 
Richard Saltonstall, George Fenwick, and Henry Dar- 
ley. They commissioned John Winthrop, Jr., as Gov- 
ernor over this Territory, with the following instruc- 
tions : — " To provide able men for making fortifications 
and building houses at the mouth of the Connecticut 
River and the harbor adjoining; first, for their own 
present accommodation, and then such houses as may 
receive men of quality, which latter houses we would 
have builded within the fort." The Patentees all in- 
tended to accompany Governor Winthrop to America, 
but were prevented by a decree of Charles I. 

This Henry Lawrence was in great distinction in 
Eneland duringf Cromwell's time. Born in 1600, he 
became a Fellow Commoner of Emanuel College, Cam- 
bridge, in 1622, but having taken the Puritan side he 
was obliged to withdraw for a time to Holland. In 
1 64 1 he was a member of Parliament for Westmore- 
land, but when the life of the king was threatened, he 
withdrew from the Independents. In a curious old 
pamphlet printed in the year 1660, entided, "The 
mystery of the good old cause, briefly unfolded in a 
catalogue of the members of the late Long Parliament, 
that held office both civil and military, contrary to the 
self-denying ordinance " — is the following passage : — 
" Henry Lawrence, a member of the Long Parliament, 
fell off at the murder of His Majesty, for which the 
Protector, with great zeal, declared that a neutral spirit 
was more to be abhorred than a Cavalier spirit, and 
that such men a3 he were not fit to be used in such a 



6o TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

day as that when God was cutting- down Kingship root 
and branch. Yet he came into play again, and con- 
tributed much to the setting up of the Protector ; for 
which worthy service he was made and continued Lord 
President of the Protector's Council, being also one of 
the Lords of the other House."* 

He married Amy, daughter of Sir Edward Peyton, 
Bart., of Iselham in Cambridgeshire. He leased his 
estates at St. Ives, from the year 1631 to 1636, to 
Oliver Cromwell, to whom he was second cousin. He 
was twice returned as member of Parliament for Hert- 
fordshire, in 1653 and 1654, and once for Colchester- 
borough, in Essex, in 1656 ; his son Henry representing 
Caernarvonshire the same year. He was President ot 
the Council in 1656, and gazetted as " Lord of the other 
House," in December, 1657. On the death of Crom- 
well he proclaimed his son Richard as his successor. In 
Thurloe's State Papers, vol. 2, is a letter to him from the 
Queen of Bohemia (sister of King Charles), recom- 
mending Lord Craven to his good offices. From the 
tenor of the letter it appears that they were in the habit 
of corresponding. In a Harleian Manuscript, No. 
1460, there is a drawing of all the ensigns and trophies 
won in battle by Oliver, which is dedicated to his 
councillors, and ornamented with their arms. Amongst 
these are those of Henry Lawrence, the Lord Presi- 
dent, with a cross, ragnly gules, the crest, a fish's tail 
or semi-dolphin. A portrait of the President is inserted 
in Clarendon's History of the Rebellion. His monu- 
ment, not yet effaced, is in the chapel of St. Margaret, 
alias Thele, in Hertfordshire.f 

John, William, and Thomas Lawrence, who came to 
New York in 1635, were cousins of the above Henry 
Lawrence, being descended from John Lawrence, who 

• "Harleian Miscellany," vol. vi., p. 489. f Ibid. 



TRACES OF AMFRITAX LINEAGE IX EXCI.AND. 6 1 

died in 1538, and was buried in tlie Abbey of Ram- 
sey. Thiey became at once large landholders in the 
Colony, and from these the present New York family 
is descended. 

But we must close this list. We have selected a few 
merely as specimens of a numerous class. Were we 
to attempt to include all who have historical pedigrees 
in England, the time would fail us and this unpretend- 
ing article swell into a volume. Through all the 
original States were settled families who brought with 
them the best blood of the Old Country. We might 
refer to the Gardiners of Maine — the Bowdoins 
and Winthrops of Massachusetts — the Saltonstalls 
and Hillhouses of Connecticut — the Constables, and 
Montgomerys of New York — the Throckmortons 
of New Jersey — the Cadwalladers of Pennsylvania — 
the Rodneys of Delaware — the Calverts and Carrolls 
of Maryland — the Washingtons and Lees of Virginia 
— the Stanlys of North Carolina — and the Middle- 
tons and Pinckneys of South Carolina. Most of these 
names have been for generations " familiar as house- 
hold words " in the ears of our people, and are inter- 
woven with all that is historical in our land. In very 
many cases the younger branches of distinguished 
families sought here a field of enterprise and action 
which was denied them at home, and thus their blood 
has been widely mingled with that of our people. 
And sometimes, generations afterwards, as in the case 
of Lord Fairfax and the present Lord Aylmer in Can- 
ada, the failure of the elder branch in England sent 
titles to be inherited by the collateral relatives on this 
continent. 

It will be noticed that in this article we have con- 
fined ourselves entirely to English lineage, though a 
similar story might have been written of every one of 



62 TRACKS OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IN ENGLAND. 

the great Continental nations. Each furnished its pro- 
portion to people our land. Nor did they all come as 
mere adventurers. We look at the portrait in armor 
of the old Governor Stuyvesant, painted by Van Dyck, 
and it realizes our idea of the stern soldier who had 
shed his blood on the battle-fields of the Low Coun- 
tries before he settled on the banks of the Hudson. 
In the same way Van Courtlandt had distinguished 
himself in arms, as the Beekmans had done in diplo- 
macy, receiving as their reward, from the king of Ba- 
varia, the coat-ot-arms they now bear. 

The possessors of many a knightly name, whose 
war-cry once rang over the battle-fields of the Guises, 
are now quietly discharging their duties as citizens in 
this great Republic, and not unfrequently the noble 
from beyond the Rhine has broken away from the 
conventionalities of his own land, and when he took 
upon him the oath of citizenship, like Steuben and De 
Zeng, has laid aside his baron's title to assume his 
part in this great experiment of Equality and Self- 
government. 

But in this land of their adoption their very names 
often suffered a change which would render them un- 
familiar in the ears of those who first bore them to this 
continent. Thus De la Montaigne has passed into 
Montanya ; and who in the name of Carow can recog- 
nize the Ouerault of French minstrelsy, or in Hasbrouck 
a descendant of the chivalrous Asbroques of St. Reny ? 

These may be called the " dottings of history." It 
may seem unimportant to us as to what are the des- 
cents or intermarriages of families, but this is far from 
being the case. It is by these inquiries only that we 
can often determine what are most likely to be the pro- 
minent intellectual or moral traits of a race. An infu- 
sion of new blood into a family may alter its character- 



TRACKS OK AMKRICAN LINKACK IN KNGI.AND. 63 

islics for generations. The royal family of Austria still 
exhibit the long face and peculiar shape of the jaw 
which was derived from their intermarriage with a 
Polish princess two centuries ago. And why may not 
mental and moral peculiarities be stamped upon a race 
in the same way ? One family is distinguished in war, 
another in literature, another in statesmanship, and an- 
other in art ; and we can trace through the whole line 
the same kind of talent developed. 

The settlement of this new continent is often putting 
a " o-reat gulf" between families who have made it 
their home, and the memorials and reminiscences they 
left behind them on the other side of the ocean. Yet 
these traditions and historical facts should be chronicled 
for the benefit of those who are to succeed them. 
From these data only can we understand those mys- 
terious laws of organization by which either physical 
or mental or moral traits are transmitted in families. 

And this subject is now receiving increased attention 
in our country. In New England a quarterly periodi- 
cal is devoted to genealogical records, while numerous 
volumes have been published, each comprising the 
history of some single family. Will not, then, the 
families which are now growing up in our land, branch- 
es of some parent tree which is still fixed in the soil ol 
the old country, feel an interest in tracing their blood 
as it flows through channels on different sides of the 
Atlantic ? If so, these brief notes may not be without 
their interest or use to the descendents of the Old 
Regime. 

Year after year the historical families of New York, 
are fading away and disappearing. " What " the 
writer once asked the Prince de Joinville, " has become 
of the Rohans and Montmorencies and the other great 
feudal families of France ? " " Gone," said the prince, 



64 



TRACES OF AMERICAN LINEAGE IX ENGLAND. 



most energetically, " gone, never to be revived. The 
abolition of the lawr of Primogeniture has destroyed 
them forever." And so it has been, on a smaller scale, 
with the Colonial families of New York. Their for- 
tunes have been e.xhausted by the division of estates, 
until their old ancestral seats have passed into the 
hands of strangers and their names are fading out from 
the land. 

Perhaps, in future years, the sketches we have given, 
may be read with pleasure by their descendants who 
bear their honored names. For them the past has a 
record from which they need not shrink. The feeling 
which prompts them to dwell upon the generations that 
have gone is one of which they have no reason to be 
ashamed. It is sanctioned both by reason and religion. 

There is a philosophy in those words of Daniel 
Webster : — 

" It is wise for us to recur to the history of our an- 
cestors. We are true to ourselves only when we act 
with becoming pride for the blood we inherit, and 
which we are to transmit to those who shall soon fill 
our places." 




WAbHINGTOS's RESIDE.VCE Ai PRESIDENT, FRANCLIN Si^LARE AND CHEKRV ST.. 1780. 



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